SOCIAL MODERNISM. - Similar to dogmatic modernism, social modernism can be called that movement of ideas and activities which, with regard to political and professional society, claims to regulate itself without taking into account the norms and essential principles proclaimed by the Church, or without giving the Church the place that belongs to it. It takes its starting point from an erroneous ideal and practical overstepping, beyond the doctrinal limits of Catholic morality, on the pretext of having to move with the times, as if the essential truth were mobile and subject to variations.
Such modernist deviations were described in the encyclical Ubi arcano of Pius XI, of 28 Dec. 1922, and they refer to the theories professed by some « concerning social authority, the right of property, the relations between capital and labor, the rights of workers, the relations between Church and State, between religion and politics, between class and class, between nation and nation, the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and of the episcopate, the social rights of Jesus Christ Himself, Creator and Redeemer, lord of individuals and of peoples » (AAS, 14 [1922], p. 696).
Historically, an anticipation of social modernism, although the designation is of more recent date, may be said to be the intellectual movement that was led by Lamennais (v.) and his companions of the Avenir, insofar as the concept of liberty was altered and good and evil were placed on an equal footing: a movement promptly condemned by Gregory XVI, with the encyclicals Mirari vos (1832) and Singulari (1834), followed then by other documents, such as the Syllabus of Pius IX (1864), and above all by the social encyclicals of Leo XIII, among which the encyclical Libertas (1888) and Rerum novarum (1891).
In the progress of social studies and with the rise of Christian Democracy (a social concept popularized with the favor of Rome and immediately fervently supported by many young priests, a notable group of conservatives and integralists of France and Italy, who in fact repudiated both the name and the substance of democracy, sought to accuse of social modernism all the initiatives of the most daring and genuine Christian sociologists, at the head of whom were, in France, Léon Harmel and, in Italy, Giuseppe Toniolo, taking as a pretext some inexact expression that had escaped the most ardent propagandists. The truth is that neither the promoters and supporters of Christian Democracy, nor the abbés Lemire, Naudet, Gayraud, Garnier and Marc Sagnier in France, nor the priests don Albertario, don Vercesi, don Torregrossa, p. Ghignoni, p. Semeria, don Sturzo etc. in Italy, with a large following of young people, can be called social modernists. They remained, even in polemics, generally orthodox. Moreover Leo XIII, with his encyclical Graves de communi (1901), had opportunely put all aspirants to the social reign of Jesus Christ on their guard, preserving them from every possible deviation, and Pius X, in his encyclical Il fermo proposito of 11 June 1905, had given practical norms to Catholic Social Action.
Various excesses in the modernist sense nevertheless occurred, at that time, in Belgium, with the attitude of the abbé Daens and his Democratic League; in France, with the organization of the Sillon (v.) reproved by Pius X (1910), and in Italy with the Rivista di cultura, Battaglie d'oggi and the organization of the National Democratic League of don Romolo Murri (v.), advocating an autonomism that could not be permitted. These were dangerous moments. In general, however, it cannot be said that social modernism took root and founded a school. At the present moment, both in France and in Italy, and also in the other nations, Christian sociology is framed within organizations of Catholic Action of full guarantee. In particular, the «Social Weeks» (c.) keep themselves in the most absolute orthodoxy, while yet giving rise to free discussions, in which even the most daring theses may be expressed.
It does not seem appropriate to include in this classification the attempts of certain progressive or communist Christians of recent years, in the service of an all too plainly untrustworthy outstretched hand, which moreover have remained negligible in number and without any following.
Bibliography12 works
Guido Anichini